‘I have an address for you,’ he said.
Noting down the details, Sarah tapped away on her keyboard and, seconds later, found what she needed to know. ‘Owned by a Mr Donald Brockley,’ she replied. ‘Buy-to-let mortgage according to the Land Registry. He owns five other buy-to-lets.’
‘Any way of finding out who the tenant is?’
‘Already on it, the TV licensing database. Let’s see . . . Miss Ella Moore, paid this year and last.’ She then cross-referenced the payment details with several other databases. ‘She’s a post grad student at Cambridge. No police record. No overseas travel in the last year.’
‘Good one. Do some more digging on the girl will you? Wait, someone else is at the flat. Got to go.’
William watched as a young girl stood at the door and had a conversion with the blond man. She walked in and the door shut.
After about thirty minutes the man left the flat alone. He carried something in his hand, William thought it looked like a laptop. The man jumped in the Range Rover drove off. William let him go, but he switched the sat-nav on and made sure that the GPS tracker had worked. Satisfied that it had, he climbed out of his car and approached the flat.
The front door had been left ajar. William pushed it open. ‘Hello,’ he shouted into it. ‘Police. Is there anyone there?’
There was no response.
Entering cautiously, pistol drawn, he crept from the small dark living room into the kitchen. The flat was deadly silent, there seemed to be no one home. Going from room to room he looked for the girl who he had seen enter but not leave. She wasn’t there. Confused, he wondered if he had missed her leaving, or perhaps she had left through the back. Deciding she must have left somehow, he put his pistol away and went to the kitchen.
In one of the drawers he found a utility bill, the addressee was a Miss Ella Moore. Underneath the first letter was a mobile phone bill. Again, the addressee was a Miss Moore. William laid the bills on the plastic worktop and took a picture of them with his phone. He emailed the pictures to Sarah who he knew would be thirsty for yet more research. He admired her keenness.
There was a noise and William turned. A car had stopped directly outside, he could see it through the lounge window and could hear the engine idling. The engine stopped and he heard a door slam shut. Someone walked past the window towards the front door. William retreated up the stairs at speed. At the top he stopped and listened.
The floorboards creaked as someone let themself in.
‘I’m here,’ he heard a man say, the voice was deep and gravely. A seasoned smoker, William guessed. The door was pushed shut.
‘The door was still open, don’t worry, she’s not been back,’ the man said, clearly talking to someone on the phone. ‘Yes, I’ll do that first then I’ll call the girl. Does she have the book? Don’t worry, I’ll find it, she’ll tell me the colour of her knickers when I’m done with her. Ha ha ha. Okay, I’ll meet you there.’
William heard some loud bangs, then the sound of glass smashing. It sounded like a fight, but he realised what the man was doing. He was trashing the place. William knew he had to get out somehow. Behind him the door to the bedroom was open, he crept in. The room was tidy, but the bed covers were crumpled. By the bed was a small window which looked out onto the main road. Trying to move silently on the creaky floor, he cautiously moved over to it and lifted the locking lever. With a firm push the window opened. It was too far to jump down, but to his relief there was a black plastic drain pipe within reach that ran down to the ground.
William heard the man climbing the stairs. Working fast he grabbed the window frame and launched himself outside onto the ledge. There was no time to shut the window on his way out. Holding onto the drain pipe, he quickly lowered himself to the ground and walked off. A woman pushing a pram on the pavement looked at him with concern. Ignoring her, he turned the corner and walked out of sight.
*
A few minutes later, William returned to his car. He took out another GPS tracker and walked towards the flat once more. As he approached, he noticed that the bedroom window had been closed. When he reached the side of the car that had parked outside the flat, he stopped, squatted down and reached under it. There was a dull clunk as the magnetic device jumped firmly into place. He returned to his own car and called Sarah for an update.
‘Any news?’ William asked.
‘Nothing of interest yet,’ Sarah said. She was sat at her desk glued to her computer screen. ‘Miss Moore has never been on the radar. No hits on her phone number either, but I’ve put a trace on it, if she makes or receives any calls, I’ll have a listen.’
‘Good. Can you check something else for me?’ William asked. He gave her the vehicle registration number of the car that had parked outside the flat.
‘Albert wants you back here for a briefing,’ Sarah said as she typed the details into her computer.
‘No chance,’ William said.
‘He’ll be mad, he likes his huddles. He wants a full debrief on everything you’ve done so far.’
‘Tough.’ William despaired at management meetings, a lot of pointless talk as far as he was concerned. ‘I’ll update him when I’m ready. You can tell him I said that.’
‘Anyway,’ Sarah said sounding exasperated. ‘That number plate belongs to a ten year old navy blue BMW. The current owner is one Anthony Pepper.’
‘Anything on him?’
‘Hold your horses. Ah, oh dear.’
‘What do you mean, “oh dear”?’
‘He’s a copper. Cambridge CID. Rank of Detective Constable.’
‘What the hell is going on?’ William asked.
‘Hold on, William. There’s a call being made to the girl’s phone. Wait out . . . It was the detective, he’s just told her that she’s been burgled. She’s on her way round now.’
*
William watched as the detective left the flat with the girl. They both climbed into his car and a moment later they drove off. He glanced at his sat-nav as the car travelled past him. Satisfied that the GPS tracking device was working, he waited a few minutes and then followed from a safe distance.
*
On a narrow country road, William slowed and frowned at his sat-nav screen. There were two small car symbols on the map, one represented his own position, the other was that of the target vehicle. It appeared to have stopped, he hoped the device hadn’t fallen off. A sudden thought occurred to him, he had the girl’s mobile phone number, so not all would be lost. Ollie could do his magic.
After a minute without further movement from the vehicle, William drove forward to try to get a look at what was going on. As he went over the brow of a hill he saw skid marks and the churned up grass verge. Then he saw the dry stone wall and a gap where the car had smashed through. He sped up. Further ahead, he saw the car lying upside down in a field. He raced forward and then screeched to a halt at the wall. He jumped out and raced to the scene.
The mangled car lay on its roof covered in mud and grass. William leaned down to the cracked window on the driver’s side and peered in. ‘Are you okay, can you hear me?’ he shouted.
The driver was slumped beside the window. There was a lot of blood and, due to the unnatural angle of the man’s head, William expected the worst. Pulling hard on the door handle was fruitless, the door was crumpled out of shape and jammed shut. William ran around to the passenger’s side.
‘Help,’ came a muffled shout from somewhere inside.
‘Are you okay?’ William shouted. ‘Can you move?’
‘The door’s stuck,’ the girl cried.
‘I’ll try to smash the window out. Cover your eyes.’ Making sure the girl was out of the way, William kicked the passenger window as hard as he could. As it was already cracked his work was easily done. In seconds he had removed most of the glass from the frame. Carefully, he reached in to help the girl.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I need to get something.’ She crawled to the back of the car and then appeared a
t the open window again with her handbag and what looked like a framed painting.
William helped her out. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked. He, visually checked over the girl for any signs of serious injury. There was a bruise on the side of her head and she looked pale and shaken, but other than that, she seemed to be relatively unscathed.
‘I’m okay,’ she explained, calming down. ‘I had my seatbelt on. Unlike that idiot.’
‘Sit down, rest a moment. Let just make sure everything is okay,’ William said calmly.
As the girl rested, William crawled in the window and looked for signs of life from the driver. His bloodied, motionless body lay on the roof. One of his arms was stuck through the bent steering wheel at a bizarre angle. When William grabbed the man’s wrist to look for a pulse, he caught a whiff of the contents of the man’s bowels.
‘He’s dead,’ William said as he climbed out of the wreck.
‘Good,’ the girl snorted. ‘He kidnapped me. Call the police, please.’ Emotion overcame her and she started to cry.
William called Sarah and asked her to get an ambulance and the police to the scene immediately. ‘Tell them of our involvement,’ he said. ‘But if they want to talk to Ms Moore then they’ll have to go through me first. She’s in our protection until we find out what the hell is going on.’
When William came off the phone, Ella was glaring at him. She looked shocked and confused. Scared even.
‘Who are you,’ she shrieked. Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Are you with him? Keep away from me.’ She stood up and backed away from William shaking her head.
‘Please. Calm down. It’s okay, I’m not with him. My name is Inspector William Temple, I work for a specialist police unit. I’m here to help you,’ William reassured and took out his cover ID.
Examining the ID from a distance, Ella didn’t look convinced. William decided on a different tact.
‘Look, I saw him trash your flat. He’s after something you have, a book, I think. But I don’t know why, that’s what I need to find out. There’s more at stake here than meets the eye, Ella. You may still be in danger.’
William walked over to the driver’s side of the car and looked for the GPS tracker. It was still there stuck to the steel frame and covered in mud and grass. He yanked it off and showed it to Ella.
‘This is the tracking device I put on while he was at your flat. That’s how I was able to follow you,’ William said flicking the mud and grass off the black device. ‘We’ll keep you safe, Ella. Please trust me.’
‘How did you know my name?’ Ella asked, wavering.
‘I was in your flat just before he came. Someone else broke in first, I was following him. I entered to investigate and found your name on some bills.’
Ella sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘What’s happening,’ she cried.
‘These are dangerous men Ella. Until I find out what’s going on you’re still in danger. Please trust me. Let me help you.’
Ella looked at William’s face; there was something about him, something genuine and trustworthy. His eyes were kind, she thought. For some reason he had made her feel safer.
‘You’re a policeman?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What unit?’
‘A specialist unit. You won’t have heard of us.’
Ella thought for a moment. She wondered how worse it could get. ‘Okay, but I’m keeping my phone on,’ she demanded. ‘And I’m calling my mother.’
‘Fine, whatever you want. Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe. Then we can talk properly,’ William said.
‘If you try anything funny,’ she said and pointed to the car.
William nodded that he got the message. They walked together towards his car. Ella called her mother, but didn’t mention anything about her ordeal. William called Sarah to make some arrangements.
‘Sarah, I need a good hotel somewhere in the Cambridge area,’ William said quietly. ‘An expensive one will do. Book two decent rooms in my cover name and email me the details. Oh, and Sarah, do me a favour and don’t tell anyone where we are, including Pinkerton. And there is just one other thing.’ He looked round at Ella, she was still on the phone. He spoke quietly and asked Sarah to do another little job.
Chapter 17
1430hrs – Wales
The bioscience research branch of the Defence Laboratories was located in a remote top-secret facility on the eastern edge of Wales. The super-modern offices were an impressive testament to their visionary architect. Built on three storeys, the building was a large curved metallic structure that looked much like a UFO when viewed from the air. The external walls around most of it were made from a triangular mesh of bomb-proof glass that ran from the ground floor up to the metallic roof. The complex was surrounded by thick woods and had a huge man-made lake at one end. Access to the building was via three carefully controlled entry-exit points that stood out at the edge of the car park like huge inverted glass bowls. Each access point had a spiral staircase that went down one floor underground where a long corridor extended into the main complex. One corridor was completely tiled in white from end to end, another was blue and the final one was red. The atmosphere inside the complex was carefully controlled to prevent anything nasty from leaking out by maintaining it at a slightly lower pressure than the outside world. At the end of each entry corridor there was a transparent tubular lift shaft which extended all the way up to the third floor.
The scientist who had been tasked with analysing the data sent from F-Branch walked at speed through the eerily quiet open plan office. His unbuttoned white coat fluttered behind him like a cape as he went. Clutching a red paper folder, he had a worried, distant look on his tired bespectacled face. But then Max Redwood had always been of a nervous disposition, he permanently looked to be on the verge of a heart attack. Dedicated to his work, he had worked through the night on the current puzzle.
‘Hey, Maximus,’ one of his colleagues shouted from behind a desk. But so lost in his thoughts was Max that he didn’t hear him.
When the job first landed on his desk he was annoyed at the distraction. It took him away from his new and innovative top-secret project for the Army. But as he delved further into the gene sequences held within the data files, he realised something was wrong; very wrong. He had worked nonstop to figure it out. Even when he reached a conclusion he double checked it and triple checked it. There was no doubt that it was bad; very bad.
Short, thin and balding, Max was a career scientist at the Defence Labs and presently worked in the biological warfare division specialising in infectious diseases. A leading and respected expert with twenty years experience, he had seen some horrendous developments in his time. A frightening number of rogue states had tried to develop biological weapons of mass destruction with varying degrees of success. There was a regular influx of material to analyse, usually plans or samples stolen by the intelligence services. Although there was some nasty and worrying stuff out there, the trouble with bio-weapons was in their delivery. Conventional methods of launching a warhead just weren’t effective when it came to bio-weapons. They tended to destroy the infectious agents before they could get to work, or they spread them in too small an area to do much damage. Max’s biggest worry was terrorist groups. Terrorists could deliver bio-weapons simply by carrying them into a country. They could spread the agent slowly, city by city, town by town. They could infect the food chain, the water supplies, the transport systems. The Defence Labs had played out dozens of different scenarios in preparation for such attacks. And Max had always believed that it was only a matter of time before someone tried it for real. He feared that time had finally come.
Impatiently, Max waited at the entrance to the lift. He looked up at the glass shaft, the lift was coming down. When it stopped he quickly stepped in and pushed the button for the second floor. As it arrived at his floor he ran out so quickly that he tripped and dropped his papers. Unfazed by the onlookers, a couple of young administration girl
s who giggled to themselves, Max picked himself up, replaced his glasses and continued towards the office of the director. At the door of the clouded glass office, Max took a second or two to catch his breath and settle his nerves, then he knocked hard on the door before entering.
Colonel Vince Ackers was the new director of the Defence Labs. A former Army Colonel, he was a larger than life character with a booming voice and a very strong presence, if not a little over bearing for some. He had only been in the job a few months and still hadn’t got used to working with civilians. And scientists, he felt, were even worse than civilians. Undisciplined and impossible to understand.
When Max walked in to the office, Col. Ackers was sat in a black leather chair at a glass table. Three other serious looking men dressed in dark suits were there too. They all stared up in wonder at the tired, unshaven mess that was Max Redwood. Struggling to get his words out, Max just stood at the door and stared back at his audience. His jaw moved up and down but the words failed to come out.
‘Well, spit it out man,’ Col. Ackers barked.
‘Sir. This is, this, it’s three,’ Max stammered. ‘You need to see this.’
‘What are you blabbering on about? Can’t you see I’m in a meeting?’
‘It can’t wait, sir,’ Max said mustering as much confidence as he could. ‘You need to see this now. It’s scenario three. Immediate threat.’
Chapter 18
1430hrs – Cambridgeshire
During the drive to the hotel that Sarah had booked for them, Ella had calmed down and explained everything from the beginning. Her father’s untimely death, her unexpected inheritance, the odd letter with the cryptic instructions to spread his ashes. And then there was the painting. She told William that Darren had given her a copy, the real one was secured in the vaults of the museum.
The Secret of Hades' Eden Page 14
